Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Too Bad, So Sad

Too Bad, So Sad

Today is a blustery day. I need to get to work on my T-28. I crashed it again yesterday but not before I flew it around for a few minutes. This is exactly the course matters took when back in the 1960’s I learned to fly control line. One day I would fly and crash, that night repair the damage and the following be back to flying my model.

I really ought to write an article for one of the RC magazines. I could call it “Fixing the Foamy.” It is my contention that many buyers of hobby magazines are inexperienced readers interested in the hobby. Most of the articles are written for intermediate to advanced flyers and while these veterans would deny it, they have forgotten what it’s like to learn and acquire the quick touch it takes to control an RC model in flight.

As we gain expertise in something the skills necessary to accomplish the complexities, become transparent as our minds learn through experience what is needed to accomplish the task. The basics become a framework for the ever growing sophistication of skills needed to fly well. These basics become imbedded in the subconscious as the brain makes corrections in mili-seconds that to the novice must be consciously thinking about.

I hope all this doesn’t sound too scientific and clinical because it applies to a whole host of skills we learn and use in our daily lives. The point is that an expert is not always the best person to teach something because they tend to take for granted all the complexities of a mastered task. They assume that the facility they have developed with great time and effort is something that should be grasped by a novice with greater ease and facility.

That is why articles written by “newbies” should be treated seriously rather than with disdain. Have you ever noticed that only articles written by top tiered experts in an area of expertise are blessed with the holy water of credibility? I think we are missing the point here. To heck with the experts…. I would prefer an article written by somebody struggling in their garages trying to do something for the first time. The truth is they don’t exist. Newbies don’t write them because they realize that publishers would never publish them. If the writer doesn’t have a host of degrees and writing credits they get tossed into the reject pile. For that we are all the poorer because it is in those that struggle that the lamp of understanding shines brightest. Once the programs of experience are written and filed in the mind, the true essence and heat of the learning process is lost. “Too bad, so sad.”